Michael L. Perlin

Michael L. Perlin

An internationally-recognized expert on mental disability law, Michael L. Perlin has devoted his career to championing legal rights for people with mental disabilities. A prolific author of 23 books and nearly 300 scholarly articles on all aspects of mental disability law, Professor Perlin says that his ninth book, THE HIDDEN PREJUDICE: MENTAL DISABILITY ON TRIAL (American Psychological Association Press, 2000), “reflects the essence of the work he has done throughout his career.” The book is an attempt to educate society about how the fear of persons with mental illness creates a hidden bias against them that prevents equal justice, a form of discrimination he calls “sanism.”

In his book and his other work, he speaks out against “sanism,” which he defines as “the irrational prejudice that causes, and is reflected in, prevailing social attitudes toward persons with mental disabilities.” Prof. Perlin’s 2011 book, INTERNATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS AND MENTAL DISABILITY LAW : WHEN THE SILENCED ARE HEARD (Oxford University Press), explores how the virulence of sanism is an international phenomenon. In a book he published in early 2013, MENTAL DISABILITY AND THE DEATH PENALTY: THE SHAME OF THE STATES (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers), he examines its impact on death penalty decision making. In a book also published in 2013 , A PRESCRIPTION FOR DIGNITY: RETHINKING CRIMINAL JUSTICE AND MENTAL DISABILITY LAW (Ashgate Press), he seeks to place dignity at the core of the criminal justice system, especially in those cases that involve defendants with mental disabilities. He is currently working on two new books, both with NYLS alumni: one on sex offender law and policy (to be published by Temple University Press) with NYLS Adjunct Professor Heather Ellis Cucolo ’02, and one on sexuality, mental disability law and therapeutic jurisprudence with Alison J. Lynch, Esq. (’13, M.A. ’15)

A teacher-lawyer-advocate who advises mental health professionals, hospitals, advocates, activists, lawyers, and governments, Professor Perlin has worked directly on mental disability cases as a deputy public defender and as director of the Division of Mental Health Advocacy in the New Jersey Department of the Public Advocate, at all levels of the judicial system from the police court to the Supreme Court of the United States. He has witnessed the complexities and frustrations facing both judges and attorneys with such cases.Professor Perlin travels around the globe to speak out about the legal rights of people with mental disabilities. In conjunction with Disability Rights International, a U.S.-based human rights advocacy organization, he has presented mental disability training workshops in Hungary, Estonia, Latvia, Poland, Bulgaria, and Uruguay. As part of his work with the Justice Action Center, he is working with advocates from Japan, Australia and the Pacific Rim to create the Disability Rights Tribunal for Asia and the Pacific, a topic that he discusses at length in a recent article, Promoting Social Change in Asia and the Pacific: The Need for a Disability Rights Tribunal to Give Life to the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, 44 GEO. WASH. INT’L L. REV. 1 (2012). He has done extensive work in China with the American Bar Association’s RULE of Law—Asia office where he has conducted “Training the Trainers” workshops in Xi’an, China to teach experienced death penalty defense lawyers how to train inexperienced lawyers, employing the online distance learning methodologies used in the NYLS online program. As a Fulbright Senior Specialist, he has taught International Human Rights and Mental Disability Law to the Global Law Program at the University of Haifa in Israel and has advised the disability rights clinic and lectured extensively on comparative law, mental disability law and criminal procedure at the Islamic University of Indonesia in Yogyakarta. In early 2014, he was elected as co-chair of the Disability Rights Interest Group of the American Society of International Law.

In 2002, he helped organize a symposium at New York Law School on “International Human Rights Law and the Institutional Treatment of Persons with Mental Disabilities: The Case of Hungary.” It was the first such U.S. gathering, bringing together prominent activists, advocates, and attorneys to look at the application of international human rights law to improve the treatment of people with mental disabilities. Nine years before that, he hosted the first law school-based symposium ever held on Therapeutic Jurisprudence.

His multivolume treatise, MENTAL DISABILITY LAW: CIVIL AND CRIMINAL (Lexis Law Publishing, 1998–2003), which was first published in 1989 by Michie, won the 1990 Walter Jeffords Writing Prize; the five-volume second edition of that treatise won the 1990 Otto Walter Writing Award in 2003, and is the indispensable authority for legal practitioners. A seven-volume third edition — to be co-authored with NYLS Adjunct Prof. Heather Ellis Cucolo — is currently in preparation. Another book, THE JURISPRUDENCE OF THE INSANITY DEFENSE (Carolina Academic Press, 1994), won the Manfred Guttmacher Award of the American Psychiatric Association and the American Academy of Psychiatry and Law as the best book of the year in law and forensic psychiatry in 1994–95. He was given the American Academy of Psychiatry and Law’s Amicus Award in 1998, and the Lifetime Achievement Award by the Human Dignity and Humiliation Studies Network in 2012. The same year, he was awarded an honorary Doctorate of Letters by John Jay College of Criminal Justice. In the summer 2013, he received the first Bruce Winick Award, given by the International Academy of Law and Mental Health (on whose board of directors he sat for twenty years).

Since he joined the faculty in 1984, Professor Perlin has helped build the course offering in his legal specialty at New York Law School to such an extent that it now leads the nation in mental disability law curricula. He created and teaches the first online courses on mental disability law, offered to students here, at other U.S.-based law schools, as well as in Japan and in Nicaragua. He has also taught sections of these courses in Israel and in Finland, and has taught portions of them in Sweden, Taiwan and Indonesia. There are currently thirteen courses in the online program. He also was instrumental in the creation of the new online Masters of Arts program in mental disability law studies that NYLS launched in January 2009.

Professor Perlin has many other passions outside the law, including the clarinet, fishing, birding, and the music of Bob Dylan.

Mental Disability, Factual Innocence and the Death Penalty, in CONTEMPORARY TRENDS IN ASIAN CRIMINAL JUSTICE: PAVING THE WAY FOR THE FUTURE at 21-46 (I. Kim and J. Liu, eds., Korean Institute of Criminology, 2014).

“You That Hide Behind Walls”: The Relationship between the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and the Convention Against Torture and the Treatment of Institutionalized Forensic Patients, in TORTURE IN HEALTHCARE SETTINGS: REFLECTIONS ON THE SPECIAL RAPPORTEUR ON TORTURE’S 2013 THEMATIC REPORT at 195-217 (American University Washington College of Law, Center for Human Rights & Humanitarian Law, 2013) (with M. Schriver)

“There Are No Trials Inside the Gates of Eden”: Mental Health Courts, the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, Dignity, and the Promise of Therapeutic Jurisprudence, in COERCIVE CARE: LAW AND POLICY (Bernadette McSherry & Ian Freckelton, eds. 201e) (Routledge) (in press)

Understanding the Intersection between International Human Rights and Mental Disability Law: The Role of Dignity, in THE ROUTLEDGE HANDBOOK OF INTERNATIONAL CRIME AND JUSTICE STUDIES (Bruce Arrigo & Heather Bersot, eds.) (2013) (in press)

“Oh, Stop That Cursed Jury”: The Role of the Forensic Psychologist in the Mitigation Phase of the Death Penalty Trial, in HANDBOOK ON FORENSIC PSYCHOLOGY (Mark Goldstein, ed. 2013) (Springer) (with Dr. Valerie McClain & Dr. Elliot Atkins) (in press)

“There’s Voices in the Night Trying to be Heard”: The Potential Impact of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities on Domestic Mental Disability Law” in EVOLVING ISSUES IN DISCRIMINATION: SOCIAL SCIENCE AND LEGAL PERSPECTIVES (R. Wiener et al, eds. 2013) (Springer) (in press)

Mental Health Law and Human Rights: Evolution, Challenges and the Promise of the New Convention, in UNITED NATIONS CONVENTION ON THE RIGHTS OF PERSONS WITH DISABILITIES: MULTIDISCIPLINARY PERSPECTIVES 241 (Jukka Kumpuvuori & Martin Scheninen, eds. 2010) (with Prof. Eva Szeli)

The Right to Refuse Treatment in Criminal Law Settings, Chapter 53 in PRINCIPLES AND PRACTICE OF FORENSIC PSYCHIATRY at 526–532 (R. Rosner ed., 2d ed. 2003); earlier version Chapter 55 in 1st ed. at 403–408 (1998)

Preface to Bruce Arrigo’s Punishing the Mentally Ill: A Critical Analysis of Law and Psychiatry at xiii–xvi. (State University of New York Press, 2002)

“Mental Illness, Crime, and the Culture of Punishment.” Chapter 2 in THE ROLE OF MENTAL ILLNESS IN CRIMINAL TRIALS: VOLUME 2, at 125–149, edited by J.M. Moriarty. Routledge, 2000

“Torts.” Chapter in LAW AND ETHICS: A GUIDE FOR THE HEALTH PROFESSIONAL (N.T. Sidley, ed.). Human Sciences Press, 1985

“Psychiatric Hospitalization: Some Predictions for the Eighties.” Chapter 17 in CRITICAL ISSUES IN AMERICAN PSYCHIATRY AND THE LAW, at 239–262 (R. Rosner, ed.)

AMERICAN ACADEMY OF PSYCHIATRY & LAW, 1982. “The Deinstitutionalization Myths: Old Wine in New Bottles,” In Conference Report: The Second National Conference on the Legal Rights of the Mentally Disabled, at 20 (K. Menninger & H. Watts, eds.). 1979

“Promoting Social Change in Asia and the Pacific: The Need for a Disability Rights Tribunal to Give Life to the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities,” 44 GEO. WASH. INT’L L. REV. 1 (2012).

“A Change Is Gonna Come”: The Implications of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities for the Domestic Practice of Constitutional Mental Disability Law, 29 NO. ILL. U. L. REV. 483 (2009).

“Where The Home In The Valley Meets The Damp Dirty Prison”: A Human Rights Perspective On Therapeutic Jurisprudence And The Role Of Forensic Psychologists In Correctional Settings, 14 AGGRESSION & VIOLENT BEHAVIOR 256 (2009) (with Prof. Astrid Birgden).

“And I See Through Your Brain: Access To Experts, Competency To Consent, And The Impact Of Antipsychotic Medications In Neuroimaging Cases In The Criminal Trial Process,” 2009 STANFORD TECHNOL. L. J. 1.

“I Might Need a Good Lawyer, Could Be Your Funeral, My Trial”: A Global Perspective on the Right to Counsel in Civil Commitment Cases, and Its Implications for Clinical Legal Education,” 28 WASH. U. J. L. & SOC=L POL=Y 241 (2008).

“Tolling for the Luckless, the Abandoned and Forsaked”: Community Safety, Therapeutic Jurisprudence and International Human Rights Law As Applied to Prisoners and Detainees, 13 LEG. & CRIMINOL. PSYCHOLOGY 231 (2008) (with Prof. Astrid Birgden).

“International Human Rights Law and Comparative Mental Disability Law: The Universal Factors” (Symposium: The United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities), 34 Syracuse Journal of International Law and Commerce 333-357 (2007).

“‘You Got No Secrets to Conceal': Considering the Application of the Tarasoff Doctrine Abroad” (Symposium: The Future of ‘The Duty to Protect': Scientific and Legal Perspectives on Tarasoff’s Thirtieth Anniversary), 75 University of Cincinnati Law Review 611-630 (2006).

“‘And My Best Friend, My Doctor/Won’t Even Say What It Is I’ve Got’: The Role and Significance of Counsel in Right to Refuse Treatment Cases,” 42 San Diego Law Review 735-756 (2005).

An Overview: International Human Rights and Mental Disability Law (Symposium: International Human Rights Law and the Institutional Treatment of Persons with Mental Disabilities: The Case of Hungary), 21 New York Law School Journal of International & Comparative Law 340–360 (2002) (with E. Szeli & K. Kanev).

“‘There’s No Success Like Failure/and Failure’s No Success at All’: Exposing the Pretextuality of Kansas v. Hendricks (Symposium: Throwing Away the Key: Social and Legal Responses to Child Molesters).” 92 Northwestern University Law Review 1247–1277 (1998).

“Is It More Than ‘Dodging Lions and Wastin’ Time’? Adequacy of Counsel, Questions of Competence, and the Judicial Process in Individual Right to Refuse Treatment Cases.” 2 Psychology, Public Policy, and Law 114–136 (1996) (with D.A. Dorfman).

“‘No Direction Home:’ The Law and Criminal Defendants With Mental Disabilities.” 20 Mental and Physical Disability Law Reporter 605–612 (1996).

“‘Dignity was the First to Leave’: Godinez v. Moran, Colin Ferguson, and the Trial of Mentally Disabled Criminal Defendants (Symposium: Persons with Disabilities).” 14 Behavioral Sciences & the Law 61–82 (1996).

“Myths, Realities, and the Political World: The Anthropology of Insanity Defense Attitudes.” 24 Bulletin of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law 5–27 (1996).

“Back to the Past: Why Mental Disability Law ‘Reforms’ Don’t Reform.” Book Review of Back to the Asylum: The Future of Mental Health Law and Policy in the United States, by John Q. LaFond and Mary Durham. 4 Criminal Law Forum 403–412 (1993).

“Decoding Right to Refuse Treatment Law (Special Issue: Forensic Treatment).” 16 International Journal of Law and Psychiatry 151–177 (1993).

“Sanism, Social Science, and the Development of Mental Disability Law Jurisprudence.” 11 Behavioral Sciences & the Law 47–66 (1993) (with D.A. Dorfman). Reprinted as Chapter 15 in Law and Psychology, at 169–188, (M. L. Levine, ed., New York University Press, 1995).

“What is Therapeutic Jurisprudence? (Symposium: Therapeutic Jurisprudence)” 10 New York Law School Journal of Human Rights 623–636 (1993).

“Fatal Assumption: A Critical Evaluation of the Role of Counsel in Mental Disability Cases.” 16 Law and Human Behavior 39–59 (1992).

“Morality and Pretextuality, Psychiatry and Law: Of ‘Ordinary Common Sense,’ Heuristic Reasoning, and Cognitive Dissonance.” 19 Bulletin of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law 131–150 (1991).

“Power Imbalances in Therapeutic and Forensic Relationships.” 9 Behavioral Sciences & the Law 111–128 (1991). Reprinted in The Hatherleigh Guide to Psychotherapy, at 215–229 (Hatherleigh, 1995).

“AIDS-Related Dementia and Competency to Stand Trial: A Potential Abuse of the Forensic Mental Health System?” 18 Bulletin of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law 349–363 (1990) (with J.A. Dvoskin).

“Are Courts Competent to Decide Competency Questions? Stripping the Facade from United States v. Charters.” 38 University of Kansas Law Review 957–1001 (1990).

Book Review of Law and Psychological Practice, by Robert L. Schitzgebel and R. Kirkland Schwitzgebel. 9 Journal of Psychiatry & Law 229–233 (1981).

“An Invitation to the Dance: An Empirical Response to Chief Justice Warren Burger’s ‘Time-Consuming Procedural Minuets’ Theory in Parham v. J.R.” 9 Bulletin of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law 149–164 (June 1981).

“Rights of Ex-Patients in the Community: The Next Frontier?” 8 Bulletin of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law 33–43 (1980).

“Après the Acquittal, Le Déluge: Release Procedures and Allocation of the Burden of Proof in Subsequent Review Hearings Following a Finding of ‘Not Guilty by Reason of Insanity’ in State of New Jersey v. Herta Fields.” 7 Bulletin of American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law 29–38 (1979).

Law Clerk, Hon. Ralph L. Fusco, Law Division, Superior Court of New Jersey

Award-winning author on mental disability law and insanity defense. Serves on the Advisory Board of the Center of Excellence for Children, Family and the Law at the Massachusetts School of Professional Psychology (Boston,MA), and the Advisory Board of the Centre for the Advancement of Law and Mental Health at Monash Univeristy (Melbourne, Australia) and lectures frequently on all continents on the relationship between international human rights and mental disability law. Testifies in trials as expert witness on questions of effectiveness of counsel in cases involving mentally disabled criminal defendants.

Courses:

Civil Procedure

Survey of Mental Disability Law

Criminal Procedure: Adjudication

International Human Rights and Mental Disability Law

Advocacy Skills in Cases Involving Persons with Mental Disabilities: The Role of Lawyers and Expert Witnesses